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Topic: Can't boot 64 bit installation DVD (Read 1881 times)

I can't get the SparkyLinux live DVD to boot. The hardware, AMD Ryzen 7 1700X on a ASRock AB350 Pro4 motherboard with 32 GB RAM. Any attempt to get the installation GUI to boot ends with repeated:

loading /live/vmlinuz... OK loading /live/initrd.img... messages

and some other text that flashes up on the screen and dissapears in the blink of the eye before the boot selection menu appears again.

A more useful boot fail happens when attempting it in text mode where it goes through a large number of boot sequence messages before it dies with these messages (filtered to what appears to be the most relevant):

squashfs: SQUASHFS error: unable to read xattr id index table

can not mount /dev/loop0 (/run/live/medium/live/filesystem.squashfs) on /run/live/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs

Googling on these messages seems to indicate that squashfs kernel modules are not being found/loaded. I find that this is unlikely as it would otherwise have been seen before now.

Also, it appears that both UEFI and "legacy" boots are available on the DVD image. Is this correct? The BIOS for my motherboard allows for either with selection of which one at the boot device level.

0.3 Please tell me you do not have a Radeon card. 0.5 Was Windows 10 preinstalled? Have other linuxes been installed sucessfully" If Win10 was on it - are you going to dual boot Windows?1. Sparky 4 or 5 1.5 Which Flavour ? I assume you are doing 64 bit2. You have tried the Live Calamares and Expert install 3. Are you going with Sparky for gaming?

Being it is fairly new kit, I would recommend Sparky 5. If it is hard and just does not work maybe try a different installer via the Debian testing netiso non-free firmware. Maybe wait a couple of days to see if the RC comes out, presently Alpha5 or if the weekly testing changes from March 18th.

The June 11th post on Debian forum does not appear to be valid for you. If you are using Sparky 5 you are in Buster.

I built the computer myself and never considered inflicting Windows 10 on it.

The computer currently has Devuan 2.0 64 bit and Linux Mint 19.0 64 bit on a 2 TB hard drive (yes, dual boot).Both installed with no problems,. I will be attempting to install Sparky on a 1 TB SSD if I can get to the installerprogram.

I can't use expert mode (of GUI or text) because it never gets to the installer, it dies while booting the installeras described in the first post.

Knowledge of squashfs problems is not a skill I have. I assume you checked the hash sum of the Sparky iso.

You could always try to install in a vm via Qemu or VirtualBox to see if the problem is something baremetal.

Seeing that you have installed linux systems before shows you probably have proper partioning for uefi. I am out of ideas. There is the Sparky irc and the Facebook page for maybe faster help.

If no answers come from others, you probably could go with the nonfree firmware net iso of Debian and then add the Sparky ppa's you choose. to /etc/apt/sources.d/ If the squashfs persists in the Debian then you could get help from the knowledgeable people at #debian-next and #debian-boot on irc. But first, wait and see a day if anyone here has ideas.

The Debian weekly for Buster (March 27) just came out, I believe they delayed to get in some small changes in perl 5.28, wpasupplicant and a bump for the kernel. The Mar 27 went in smoother - I3 with buster in a vm. The alpha RC5 went onto /deb/sdb - SDHC memory card on my atom, whole lot of updates. peace out.

"Knowledge of squashfs problems is not a skill I have. I assume you checked the hash sum of the Sparky iso."

The only thing that is needed for squashfs to be used is to load the kernel module for it. It was introduced for Linux in 2002 so it should "just work". LikeI said in the first post, the error messages seem to indicate that it is having problems finding/installing the squashfs kernel module. I did a sha256sum onthe downloaded iso and it checked out OK. I also used dd to copy the iso image to an SD card and as far as I can remember I get the same results. I needto verify this.

"Seeing that you have installed linux systems before shows you probably have proper partioning for uefi."

I've been installing Linux since 0.9 (on almost 60 floppy disks) and several different distributions over the years including Debian, Unbuntu, Linux Mint,PCLinusOS, CentOS, Red Hat, Fedora, Suse, and a few others . So I have been around that block more than a few times but this is my first UEFIinstall. I did read up on UEFI before I started this. The SSD hasn't been partitioned yet, I was going to allow the install program to do it. I usually useSystemRescueCD to partition the drives before install and then use the custom partition option to tell install which partitions to use and where to mountthem. This time I was going to let the install do it so it would do the UEFI partitioning for me. Being installed on a separate drive should also keep it fromcausing any problems with the other installations.

Anyway, thanks for trying, I haven't given up yet so if I find a solution I will post it.